Over 50% of small businesses have a web-based presence of sorts, yet most are doing a shocking job of ensuring that their customers’ web experiences of their brands are; user friendly, informative and pleasing to the eye. Having a professional website design speaks highly of your company, extending your potential client’s sense of trust and a positive impression of your brand from their first few clicks.

Does Your Business Have a Professional Website Design Right Now?

Take a look at your website and then browse through it as if you were a client. In the real world it wouldn’t be professional to have a nasty-looking corridor leading to your meeting room, or old signage on your business’s front door, so why would you ‘meet’ your clients via an unprofessionally designed website? Your website design need not have all the bells and whistles, but it’s important that it plays its part as the virtual representation of your company and its core mission – at the end of the day, your website design needs to make good business sense (to you) and essentially be a functional asset to your team.

I Need Help With Professional Website Design. Where do I Start?

What is your company’s mission and core values? How would a professional website design help you convey those? There are many factors to consider when devising the initial strategy for your website’s design. The first is to understand the key personas of your primary target market. Your website designer may not necessarily know this – it is your role to communicate to your designer exactly who needs to feel ‘most comfortable’ on your site. Here are a few scenarios:

Do users need to be welcomed in a way that is particularly sensitive? In that case, they may need to see a few happy faces and have a personalized/more human experience of your homepage.

Perhaps luxury may be something your client is accustomed to? Your website design can then tailor; fonts, colors, textures, and photography to appeal to the desired demographic.

Or perhaps your small business offers services in the financial sector, in this case you may want your potential customer to view you as trustworthy from their first click – your professional website design would then need to be dead straight when it comes to usability, calming color choices, and maybe also personalized with ‘human’ stories. You should make it clean and clear for the user to see how you take care of your customers. A professional website design could help convey this by maybe incorporating a gallery with simple, but effective, image sliders, and possibly a guestbook of sorts with well-presented comments from your clients.

How do I Convert Users to Customers With Website Design?

When it comes to professional website design, the key is to use the design to accentuate and sell your products and services. If you offer e-commerce, you need to understand how your customer wants to see your products. Do they want multiple views? Do they want the option to magnify certain sections of a particular product? Your customer will want to see just what they need to see – there’d be no need to distract them with anything complex – they’d most likely prefer a sleek and professional website design that puts function and organization first.

A professional website design may say more about your business than the actual content on the website, so it’s important to get the design right for your business at the very start. A ‘one size fits all’ approach may be cheaper, but not necessarily worthwhile in the long run.